Need Classic Pedigree View in RM9

[thejerrybryan]

I comment regularly about how much I need the classic Family View in RM9 at least as an option because the Classic view from RM7 is so much more useful to me than the new Family View in RM9. The same thing is true of the classic Pedigree View from RM7. I need the classic Pedigree View in RM9 at least as an option because it is so much more useful to me than the new Pedigree View in RM9. Here follows a perfect example.

I was working on my long term project to be sure that I have a birth date for everyone in my database. My list of people for whom I’m missing a birth date includes my sixth cousin Ashley Ann Andrews. In RM7, I can place her as the primary position in Pedigree View and I can instantly see that I need to start my research with her great grandfather William Frederick Moore who was born in 1901.

I will place then William Frederick Moore in the primary position of Descendant View. Having done so, I will make sure I have birth dates for his children and their spouses. Then I will make sure that I have birth dates for his grandchildren and their spouses. Then I will make sure I have birth dates for his grandchildren and their spouses. That will pick up the birth date for Ashley Ann Andrews and for many other family members. My primary sources will be census records until I get into modern times. This is a standard “working from the known to the unknown” way of doing research.

By contrast, the Pedigree View for RM9 lists no birth dates for anybody in this particular family grouping. I could eventually work out that I would need to start my research with William Frederick Moore, but it would be a lot more work. The big thing that’s missing from RM9’s Pedigree View is the exact birth and death dates for each person. I really don’t just want the birth year and death year. I want the full dates. But RM9 presently doesn’t even have the birth and death year for many of the people in the new Pedigree View.

I think having the classic views as a option rather than just putting them back in place of the news views would be a good idea because there are surely some RM users who prefer the new views.

[MadDog]

In v9, when going from the Family View to Pedigree, I’d like the person highlighted in Family to be in the primary position in Pedigree (as it is in v7).

[thejerrybryan]

@MadDog

n v9, when going from the Family View to Pedigree, I’d like the person highlighted in Family to be in the primary position in Pedigree

Yes, I totally agree. More generally, when going from X View to Y View, I would like the person highlighted in X View to be in the primary position in Y View. Actually, my bigger complaint is that the behavior seems inconsistent and not to be repeatable. When I switch views, I never can predict where the highlighted person is going to show up in the new view. Sometimes the highlighted person does go to the primary position of the new view but often not. I have struggled without success to understand the logic that is being used.

I confess that I have long had a wish for an easily changeable option (with emphasis on OPTION) where the primary position of Pedigree View would not be the leftmost position but instead would be one generation to the right of the left most position. I might only use this option 2% to 5% of the time, and I wouldn’t use it for normal activity where I am following a given person around from one view to another. Instead, I would use this option only when I was scrolling up and down one person at a time in the Index tab of the left sidebar. In this very specialized situation, it can be very helpful to see both the highlighted person and the spouse of the highlighted person in Pedigree View.

I really don’t understand what the current behavior of positioning the highlighted person is trying to accomplish when changing views. And for that matter, I don’t even understand the logic it is using because the behavior is not always repeatable. There was some discussion during the RM8 Community Preview to the effect that it was trying to put the new view back the way it was before. But it doesn’t really do that. And even if it really did do that, it’s a bad idea.

[Charlie_Allingham]

I agree, the RM7 default view was much better. These days, I have to say, I really prefer the Ancestry default view (even though they keep tweaking it too!)

BTW my default Pedigree view does have years of births.

[thejerrybryan]

@Charlie_Allingham

BTW my default Pedigree view does have years of births.

My Pedigree View only has birth years for the two leftmost generations. That’s unlike RM7 which has full birth and death dates for all five generations. In my use case, I needed to find the first generation reading left to right which had a birth date. The first generation with birth dates in my use case was the fourth generation. That’s why none of the people in the RM9 Pedigree View that I posted had any birth information listed at all, not even a birth year.

[AlanWatson]

Just to add a vote, I very strongly agree with @thejerrybryan that the RM7 family view is much, much better than that in RM9 and also agree with him about the pedigree view.

The RM9 family view wastes far too much vertical space with the blanks between the children and then reduces the horizontal space too much by adding a spouse for each child. The result is that even after shrinking the font size I can’t see enough children on the page and can’t see enough information about them. Sure, I can see the name of a spouse where there is one, but only one. I also can’t see a marker to show that one or more other spouses are present and nor can I switch directly to the spouse by clicking on him/her. What’s more the clash between the position of the spouse (to the right of the person) and the pointer to show the spouse (to the left) is very counter-intuitive and confusing. In my view, the design is very poor.

I very, very strongly prefer the tabular form with more lines and more columns which RM7 used. If the developers wanted the option to show spouses in the same view, the best way would be to have a plus sign (as in the descendants view) to expand a person and show all his/her spouses in rows underneath the person’s record.

On the pedigree view, I don’t see any reason for RM9 to show less information that RM7, although I am a little puzzled that Jerry’s RM7 pedigree view seems to be different from mine; I only see dates of birth and death for the first three generations.

[nkess]

@AlanWatson

, although I am a little puzzled that Jerry’s RM7 pedigree view seems to be different from mine; I only see dates of birth and death for the first three generations.

And I’m puzzled as I show year of birth and year of death for all 5 generations (if recorded) when 5 generations is selected— but NOT when 6 generations is selected…

What is the difference between our programs? I’m Windows 11 RM 9.0.7.0

[cweese]

It is related to the font scaling setting which is in your RM Display settings. I see dates in the first 3 generations of the pedigree view when set to 100%. If I set it to 80%, I see dates in 4 generations. If I set it to 125%, I see dates in only the first 2 generations.

[nkess]

Great thought @cweese but the font scale settings in my RM display settings are set at 100%.

[thejerrybryan]

@nkess

the font scale settings in my RM display settings are set at 100%.

My normal setting is 105%. I find 100% too small and 125% too large.

In any case, at 105%, only the leftmost two generations of Pedigree View show birth and death years.

At 100%, only the leftmost two generations of Pedigree View show birth and death years.

At 75%, only the leftmost three generations of Pedigree View show birth and death years. Of course at this level, text on the screen is so small it’s hard to read, and I have very good vision for a person of my age.

The RM7 Pedigree View shows full birth dates and death dates (not just birth years and death years) for all five generations. I find it very easy to read.

One of the things I’m able to do in RM7 is to choose an actual font and point size, not just a percentage size without choosing a font. I choose Consolas font at 11 points for RM7. It’s very, very readable. Consolas is probably not a very familiar font. It’s a fixed width font, and fixed width fonts such as Courier or Courier New often have a very non-professional look and feel that that’s unpleasant to work with. Consolas is often used in text editors that are used for programming because text editors for programming really need to use fixed width fonts. And unlike Courier and Courier New, Consolas is really quite pleasant on the eye and brain.

So I wish I had the ability to specify my own fonts and point sizes in RM9 like I could in RM7. I suspect the limits on fonts in RM9 have to do with having a way to set up screen appearances in a way that works both on PC’s and Macs. But I find many of the RM9 screens just hard to look at.

[cweese]

In addition to your settings in RM, your view will also depend on your Windows text scaling in your display preferences. I have verified this. There may also be an influence depending on your screen size setting in pixels. I have not tried that particular change. My screen size is 1920x1080 and my text scaling in Windows is 125%.

[RWL]

I too vote to bring back the RM7 pedigree view as an option.

[rcollman]

I appreciate the concern about clicking on pedigree and not seeing a full date. And moving outward one generation at a time approach to improving information.

Have you considered modifying your process by turning it upside down? Until Bruce changes the interface for us, I suggest instead of moving from ego out, pick a standard generational point and move towards ego with your quality control using the descendant view. A click on the offending person will take you there.

Want to focus upon your direct line? color code your direct ancestors. They will pop in the descendent view, ignore the others. I have a different color for each of my grandparents’ direct lines.

You are looking for some of the features that are in the descendant view to be in the pedigree view. Something less than that seems to be a reasonable request.

[thejerrybryan]

@rcollman

Have you considered modifying your process by turning it upside down?

I do use Descendant View very heavily and I do use color coding very heavily, both in a manner very similar to what you describe. It’s just that for my project to create birth facts for everybody in my database, sometimes Pedigree View is the initial approach that’s needed. That’s because for a person without a birth fact, it’s much more likely that one of their ancestors has a birth fact than one of their descendants.

I like to start with a person who does have a good birth fact and work one generation at a time away from them. So I find a person with no birth fact, use Pedigree View to find the nearest ancestor who does have a birth fact, and then use a combination of Descendant View and Family View to work from that ancestor back to the present finding birth information.

In all truth, I find RM9’s Family View, Descendant View, and Pedigree View all to be significant steps backward from the equivalent features in RM7. And I find the weakness in RM9’s Family View and Descendant View to be a much worse problem than the problems in RM9’s Pedigree View. Here’s a quick summary.

Pedigree View: fails to show full birth dates and death dates for all five generations. Instead, it shows only birth and death years, and only for two or three generations.

Family View: fails to show full birth dates, birth places, death dates, and death places for the children. Shows about half as many children on the screen at the same time as RM7. Fails to have a convenient rearrange children function button (the rearrange children function in the left sidebar is much harder to use). Fails to support right click => move to primary position.

Descendant View: fails to support Webhints. That’s a really big one and it’s why I have to go back and forth so much between Descendant View and Family View. Family View has Webhints and Descendant View has the information I really need to see. Spouses are indented incorrectly and look like siblings unless you look very closely. Left chevrons are to the right of the person’s name, and right chevrons are at the far right side of the page.

An overarching problem is that the selected person does not go into the primary position of the new view when you change views, and instead seems to go into some sort of random position. I’m sure it’s not really random, but there seems to be no rhyme or reason to how it actually works.

[Spyder]

Hi Jerry, I changed my setting to 105% and I still see birth-death dates for all 5 generations. I’m not sure how you are not getting that. I checked and couldn’t find a setting which controls that.

[thejerrybryan]

Can you post a screen shot?

Do you have an especially large screen? Also, I wonder if it has something to do with screen resolution settings are the Windows or Mac level.

[Spyder]

This is from my Win10 machine on a 20 inch monitor:

I just tried it on my Win11 laptop with a 13 inch screen and I only get the dates in the first 2 generations.
I changed the display scale to match the Win10 machine (100%) and I get all the dates.
Anything more than 100% and I lose the dates after the second generation.

Hope this helps.

[thejerrybryan]

Just as a reminder, I can go from getting the birth and death years on two generations to getting them on three generations by reducing the RM %. But even if I go as low as 75% in RM, I still only get three generations instead of five. This is on my Windows 10 laptop with about a 14" wide monitor. I can’t explain the difference in behavior. (Added: I just now tried 50%, and I got birth and death years on four generations, but still not all five. But the screen is now so small that everything is very hard to read.)

And as a further reminder, my desire for the classic view is more than just getting the years on all five generations. It’s really about getting the full birth and death dates on all five generations, plus keeping the selected person in the primary position of each view as I change views.

[cweese]

@Spyder, @thejerrybryan, I did some extensive testing on my laptop with a 15.3" screen and a second 24" monitor. The screen resolution appeared to have no effect on the number of generations in which dates can be seen. I tried both 1920x1080 (recommended on my machine) and 1280x960 with no difference in the RM% where the pedigree generations changed. The Windows 10 scaling setting on either screen did not made any difference, either. It appears to be only the RM9 scaling % that has an effect. My numbers for the RM scaling % and generations with a date are:
5 gens at 76% and below
4 gens at 77-85%
3 gens at 86-116%
2 gens at 117% and above
1 gen ??? (didn’t try to find it).
If different machines have different levels where the number of generations changes for seeing dates, it may have something to do with screen size, video drivers, or who knows what. By the way, RM must be closed and restarted whenever a change is made.